Fair Park, we've been told again and again, is 277 acres. Says so right on Fair Park's own website: "Located in the heart of Dallas, Fair Park is 277 acres of museums, attractions, history, art and performances."

Not true.

Well, yes, the city owns 277 acres in South Dallas surrounded by a black metal fence. That's the reason you keep hearing that number in the debate over whether the city should cede control of Fair Park to a private nonprofit run by former Hunt Oil-man Walt Humann.

But the truth is Fair Park spills out far beyond the fence line and into the seldom-traveled streets beyond the South Haskell Avenue side of the property line -- 50 properties, according to the tax rolls, every single one of which is tax-exempt.

Some of it's nice, if you have a soft spot for concrete and fences. Some of it looks like a good place to do bad things.

The city doesn't own those 70 acres. But that doesn't mean they're not part of Fair Park. They're owned by the park's largest tenant: the State Fair of Texas.

Hey, you can see Fair Park from some State Fair of Texas-owned land on Fleetwood Street! (Robert Wilonsky)

State Fair officials said Monday they've been acquiring the land for more than two decades, and that they need it for parking -- for fairgoers and livestock haulers -- or for access to the fairgrounds from those remote lots. Mitchell Glieber, the State Fair's president, showed me an aerial photo taken of the neighborhood during one Texas-OU morning, and it looked like someone had neatly arranged tens of thousands of Matchbox cars all over South Dallas.

Fair Parking. I don't know why we just don't call it that. What "park"?

And parking is also just about the worst thing you bring up to someone who lives around Fair Park or remembers that grim period in the late 1960s and early '70s when the city and the Fair grabbed more than 200 homes around Fair Park, along South Fitzhugh and Second avenues.

The city and fair snatched those homes because a 1966 report prepared by Economics Research Associates told them to, because Fair Park had two problems: "inadequate parking" and "poor Negroes in shacks." Paving, fencing and lighting up land around Fair Park would "solve that problem."

But it didn't erase the memory of that betrayal.

Late last week Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price sent a letter to a few members of the Dallas City Council explaining why he's dead-set against turning over Fair Park to the foundation. The missive, he told me, was specifically addressed to "the black councilpersons, because most of them are too young to have the history." Far as he's concerned, the foundation is just another swindle 50 years later.

"Once upon a time there was a dastardly, devilish city called Dallas who was known for keeping its foot placed firmly on the necks of a small, poor community called Fair Park," he wrote. "The little homeowners association there was no match for it in times past and that sordid tale has replayed often in the history of the city. Regrettably, as I look at the Mayor and Council’s present plan for this same Fair Park community, I am certain but not shocked that the more things change the more they remain the same."

Price wrote that the existence of those 70 acres outside of the gates is "tantamount to treason."

Most of the State Fair's land around Fair Park is paved, lighted and fenced. Some of it is in an industrial area; some of it dead-ends into neighborhoods filled with single-family residences. There's also a giant lot across from 18 standalone units of low-rent housing built at the start of World War II. Its residents stare at a sign warning people not to park there unless they want to be towed.

And some of it's unkempt land right next to tumbledown houses where concrete steps and old foundations peek out from beneath the weeds. Through the trees, you can see the back of Fair Park's livestock buildings.

Much of the property was bought with profits pocketed by Big Tex -- money that should be going back into a fading Fair Park, not into buying up lots around it. According to financial summaries provided by the State Fair, it spent $175,000 on land purchases in 2008, and another $548,000 in '09.

Glieber said not all of the land was bought with fair ticket money; some, he said, came from the Simmons Foundation. But even State Fair officials have a hard time figuring out what was bought when or whether there were houses on some of the properties when they were purchased or even why they were acquired in the first place. For instance, the day after our chat Glieber sent several emails trying to decipher the timeline.

Glieber said his people are talking to the Dolphin Heights Neighborhood Association about using some of the land during the off-season -- "more play space for the kids, more green space, the hot-button issues." He said the State Fair has no further plans to buy more land around Fair Park. And he promised he'll have his real estate people look into selling some of the vacant properties.

But Fair Park and the State Fair have a reputation for being a bad neighbor. That's what happens when you buy a lot of land where people used to live and leave it empty most of the time and threaten to tow them if they even think about parking there. I asked Glieber, straight up: Does he think the State Fair's a good neighbor?

"To this point, to my knowledge, nobody has brought us any proposals for what they would like to do on the land outside of fair time," he said. "But if somebody wanted to use it for public purposes during nonfair time, we’d consider it."

Problem is, that's the same offer the fair makes inside the gates: It's all yours, at least until Big Tex needs it.